Daredevil Tom Cruise Defied Death With His Latest Crazy Stunt in ‘American Made’

Tom Cruise has made it a professional point of pride that he does all of his own stunts. 54 years old, still ripped, and with nothing to lose, he’s made headlines and earned respect by jumping out of every structure imaginable, developing proficiency with various firearms, and most recently and notably, clinging to the side of a aircraft in active flight like a little gecko with a death wish. It would appear there’s nothing the man won’t do (aside from keep his shirt on for the full duration of a studio film), and a special report from the set of his upcoming thriller American Madehas raised the bar even higher.

Cruise’s newest collaboration with longtime director Doug Liman (the madman behind The Bourne Identityand Edge of Tomorrow) casts the star as Barry Seal, a real-life opportunist who spun a gig as a commercial pilot into a CIA gun-running contract and a side hustle moving kilos of coke for narco kingpin Pablo Escobar. This wild-but-true story includes some astonishing details, such as one episode wherein Seal abandons the controls of his plane so that he may go into the cargo storage area to manually dump some, er, ‘packages’ out of the side. Cruise, naturally, insisted on going through these same motions himself. To rephrase: an internationally renowned movie star most likely insured for millions demanded not only to pilot a plane himself, but to let it briefly spiral to the ground while he rooted around in the back for bundles of guns and cocaine.

The full story is at Yahoo, an insanely realized version of that old “Wait, if you’re up here, then who’s flying the plane?” joke. We have yet to learn how Cruise will possibly top himself this time around, however. I guess, what, he’d have to jump out of a spacecraft while in orbit?